This dude makes good observations. #1601880
The great thing about tourist taxes is that they conform to everyone’s first rule of revenue generation, in that someone else has to pay them. Opinion polls routinely show that people are strongly in favour of higher taxes for someone else. If your city levies a tourist tax, you won’t be paying it unless you get drunk and decide to spend the night in town.
"by and large, someone else will be paying and you might be benefitting."
Very neat, eh??
The UK has a current-affair issue on this:
it’s coming very soon to a town near you. Mayors will soon be able to levy a tourist tax on overnight stays, and we can bet that every Bürgermeister will be rushing to stuff their coffers with the extra funds they can throw at their pet projects, or even at residents.
From a textbook/externality-obsessed point of view, it makes some amount of sense to tax tourists. They're annoying, numerous, all go to the same places and, especially in nature-travel places, impact wildlife and wear down trail etc etc.
And come on, who among us hasn’t had moments when we’d love to tax a tourist? Walking to Waterloo station across Westminster Bridge past hordes of stationary visitors blocking every square inch you could be forgiven for wondering if the proposed tax on hotel and rented accommodation goes far enough
So how about a selfie surcharge for those lingering outside the entrances to Tube stations? Can I demand payment when asked for directions, and should they really be able to walk on the cracks in my pavement without making any contribution to its upkeep?
100-thousand-fucking percent.
Let's go further. Visitors to my house is annoying... they use extra electricity and toilet paper. And they take up more space
I have even wondered if this is something we might consider on a more local level. Can I tax the guests who come to stay with us? A small utilities surcharge rising rapidly after, say, three days, could manage expectations and help us maintain the house as a desirable visitor location. A contribution to the cost of a new air fryer can be justified as an upgrade to the facilities.
More seriously, what do tourist tax do? There merely RESHUFFLE what the tourist spends, from individual/business sellers to the local/national government. Why would you want to do THAT?!
The optimistic argument is that as long as places are not greedy, it might be possible to shave the tourists’ chins without them noticing the nicks. Lots of cities already do. But these new charges come at a cost. Money spent on the accommodation tax is money not available to spend elsewhere. It’s a cash transfer from business to local government.
A family booking two rooms or a rental for up to five nights (the limit in Edinburgh, which already has one) will be noticeably out of pocket. That could be a restaurant forgone, coffee shops not visited, souvenirs not purchased or even a trip shortened.
Coolio... how did that help anybody, Mr. central planner??
...and in fact, the larger the country, the more domestic tourism there is. So now you're just taxing everyone to support everyone...? Sounds like a typically idiotic democracy thing
There are cities like Barcelona that are in open revolt against foreign tourists. This seems terribly self-defeating, but at least the locals actively want to deter visitors.
That's fair, and consistent with what taxes do and how they function: you get less of the thing you tax.
Barcelona peeps want their city back... or at least have the tourists go somewhere else/spread out across the year.
it is hard to shake off the feeling that, rather like resident parking schemes, these taxes are not really about mitigating the adverse impacts of tourism and will simply become a revenue generator for cash-strapped councils and self-promoting mayors.
when you are cheering the idea, remember that most of those tourists will actually be you. Then ask yourself how many British cities you really feel like paying extra to visit. I can think of several that should be paying me.
LOL, sick burn. Love it.
The “compared to what?” is strong with this issue.
Taxing tourists is better than taxing locals and worse than taxing nobody.
is it?
In any isolated setting, sure, and especially for a place like Iceland (400k people, 2 mil visitors every year). Tax each visitor a little and it adds up to a lot.
but everyone's a visitor and local somewhere. Isn't this an unstable eq/inferior Nash equilibrium of some sort?
It's also about incidence. If you subscribe to the notion that local governments are meant to serve local people, and that tax incidence will be shared between both the consumers and producers... then the tourist tax at least places more of the incidence on outsiders for whom the local government has no obligation towards.
TARIFFS to protect against outsiders!! We don't need those folk over here
I have also argued that tariffs are less bad than other taxes.
I knoooow, on the margin anyway.
You've been quiet about that in recent months. Argument fallen out of favor...?
It's not hot anymore. I regret nothing.
Or tourists become an elevated class because they bring the money. I’ve been to some 3rd world countries like that.
Tourists tend to be those with more disposable income, so there’s a natural progressivity to it.
It also fits the criteria that the best taxes are the most avoidable. What’s more avoidable than traveling to another part of the world?
My first thought too...
This whole article is kinda like econ-ception ("we have to go deeper!") because it starts by exactly going one level deeper and asking how those tourist tax dollars might otherwise have been spent, but then it fails to go two levels deeper by asking how those tax dollars might otherwise have been raised
It’s probably not a terrible assumption that these are almost entirely additional taxes, but sometimes localities really do deliberate over which new revenue source to add.
In those cases, you may reasonably answer “None of the above, please. Failing that, tax the tourists.”
I agree that they tend to be additional new taxes, but they could delay the imposition of new taxes, next time the city is in a budget crisis
And yeah, I hate tourists, so imma vote for a tourist tax out of spite either way
next up: boomer tax!
I know the Barcelona case closely, in basic numbers: A tourist in a tourist apartment pays €9.50 per night, of that, only €1.13 (11.8%) goes to public housing, the other €8.37 disappears into tourism promotion, general budgets, and municipal projects.
Meanwhile, the local keeps paying their property tax and rent without getting anything back... the tax doesn't reduce their taxes, it just collects more.
crazy. TELL US MORE?!